1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to controlling use of content, or other items, through usage rights associated with the content. In particular, this invention relates to the association of consequential rights with items, and the enforcement of such rights.
2. Description of Related Art
Digital rights management (DRM), or “rights management”, refers with a process of associating usage rights to digital content, as well as managing and enforcing the usage rights. Content can include any type of content, such as music, books, multimedia presentations, video information, executable programs or the like. In general, any information that is capable of being stored can be protected through the use of rights management. For example, a digital book could be accompanied by a license establishing usage rights such as viewing, printing, borrowing, or the like, and any conditions governing the digital book's usage. These rights could then be controlled by, for example, an associated reader's software, and the allowable transactions, such as buying, printing, or the like, be authorized by, for example, a clearinghouse. One of the most important issues impeding the widespread distribution of digital content via electronic means, such as the Internet, is the lack of protection of intellectual property rights of content owners during the distribution, dissemination and use of the digital content. Rights management addresses this problem.
In the world of printed documents, a work created by an author is typically provided to a publisher, which formats and prints numerous copies of the work. The copies are then distributed to bookstores or other retail outlets, from which the copies are purchased by end users. While the low quality of physical copying, and the high cost of distributing printed material have served as deterrents to unauthorized copying of most printed documents, digital documents allow easy copying, modification, and redistribution if they are unprotected. Accordingly, rights management controls the use of content, for example, to permit copying, modifying and redistributing under certain specified condition.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,530,235, No. 5,634,012, No. 5,715,403, No. 5,638,443 and No. 5,629,980, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety, generally disclose systems for rights management. In general, an author creates a document and forwards it to a distributor for distribution. Typically, the author is the creator of the content, however, the author can be any one of the creator, the owner, the editor, or any other entity controlling a portion of content, or an agent of one of those entities. The author may distribute electronic documents directly, without involving a secondary party such as a distributor. Therefore, the author and the distributor may be the same entity. A distributor can distribute electronic documents to one or more users, upon request. In a typical electronic distribution model, the content can be distributed as an electronic document in encrypted form. For example, a distributor can encrypt the content with a random key, having encrypted the random key with a public key corresponding to one or more users. Thus, the encrypted document can be customized solely for a particular user. The user is then able to use the private key to unencrypt the public key and use the public key to unencrypt and view the electronic document.
Payment for the electronic document can be passed from a user to a distributor by way of a clearinghouse which can collect requests from one or more users who wish to view a particular document. The clearinghouse can also collect payment information, such as debit transactions, credit transactions, credit card transactions, or other known electronic payment schemes and forward the collected payments to a distributor. Furthermore, the clearinghouse may retain a share of the payment as a fee for these services. The distributor may also retain a portion of the payment from the clearinghouse to cover, for example, distribution services and royalties due an author. Various business models can be addressed with rights management systems.